Way back last fall I purchased an online course from the great Peter Rollins. He did a "pay what you can" offer for his teaching on Paul Hessert's book Christ and the End of Meaning. There's nine videos (with Q & A, since the course was originally taught live online), plus a PDF copy of the book, which is out of print. I got the course as professional development. I need 20 hours of continuing education as part of my ordination and it's so wonderful to have such great online resources available.
I didn't intend, necessarily, to write or report on what I was learning, but after viewing the first video and reading the first chapter of the book, I'm pretty excited about the kinds of thoughts in triggers in my mind. The following is an extended quote from Chapter 1, that I felt most compelling:
In order for Christianity to be "meaningful" in the culture, it must validate the culture's demands for meaning and power and try to fulfill them. It does this by accepting the cultural structure as the basis of its own understanding — that is, the imperfect present linked to, but separated from, the ideal by time and guilt. The variant forms of Christian thought and practice — conservative, liberal, evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, orthodox — are but various forms of this one cultural orientation. In spite of the specific features by which each distinguishes itself from the others, or those features by which the others characterize it, there is a remarkable structural unanimity.
For example, all are one in the condemnation of the present as deficient to the ideal or even a betrayal of it. One stresses contemporary "immorality" in terms of promiscuous and deviant sex, drug and alcohol addiction, and preoccupation with "materialistic concerns." Another attacks "secular humanism." Another stresses systemic poverty and indifference to human values. Still another points to obsession with ideology that feeds the arms race and the peculiar economy attending it. Another concentrates on the neglect of traditional religious and patriotic practices.
It is the circle of reality as a whole that is legitimated by religion, and the condemnation of the present, in whatever form this may take, is one of the most important ways this circle is supported. Condemnation of the present is not an attack on the culture but a reinforcement of its structure.
Hessert's main argument is that western society has one "circle of reality" through which it approaches life. Generally this is the distance between what is and what might be. We see ourselves as we are and the distance between now and some ideal future as the purpose of life. We want something different than what we have - whether it's a job, money, a relationship, happiness, peace, freedom, weight loss, whatever - and we work towards achieving it.
His argument is essentially that most of Christianity has generally participated in this same western "circle of reality." Typically, though, various Christian denominations find an alternative goal. They replace whatever "worldly" thing we're searching for with Jesus or fulfillment or social justice or whatever, calling it a different perspective or worldview, but really just reinforcing the very same "circle of reality" centered in pursuit.
It's only chapter one, so I don't have a lot, yet, to say about the alternative, but I'm fascinated by the religious implications of Hessert's idea that there is an alternative - an alternative that is perhaps much closer to Christ and Christ's teaching than what we've come to know as Christianity.
Established religion, at least in this western "circle of reality," tells us there's something wrong with the world. It highlights the difference between what is and what could be, focusing on all the problems that prevent the now from being the ideal. What if a better understanding of Christianity says there's nothing wrong with the world, just our perception of it?
Rollins used the analogy of fish in the water. They're not conscious of the water itself, it is just part of the fabric of a fish's reality. Our "circle of reality" is not something we inherently see, but the structure by which we experience the world. Jesus called us to notice the water, to see our "circle of reality," and then Jesus challenged us to adopt a different one. The critique of Christianity is not about the substance of our beliefs, but about the very frame around which we build them.
Jesus provides a fundamentally different way of seeing and understanding existence. "Blessed are the poor" makes no sense in our culture, neither does "love your enemies," or "give without asking anything in return." These ideas fundamentally contradict how we understand the world. Our "circle of reality" is built around acquisition and improvement, but Jesus calls us to look at things differently.
What if the Kingdom of God is not something in the future (the ideal), but it's just a different way of seeing what's already here? Again, it's only chapter one, but I'm excited to see how Hessert (and Rollins) explores this argument more thoroughly. What if the culmination of all things is not some far off resolution to a current problem, but the result of people seeing the world as it is?
I love the optimism of this idea: that there's nothing wrong with the world, just something profoundly wrong with how we look at it (and thus how we live in it).*
*I found out this is, apparently, a Henry Miller quote. Who knew? (Not me. I promise.)
They all doubted, but they didn't doubt God - Jesus had appeared to them - they doubted themselves. They had transferred their doubt to Jesus - while he was with them, things were fine, but once they were on their own, they lost all confidence. Even when they knew Jesus was alive and had received the Holy Spirit, it took some work to get them to really believe.
One of the first things I read from Peter Rollins that really stuck with me was about doubt transference - he argued that many average parishioners don't really believe in most of what Christianity describes, but they have faith because their pastor does - or at least seems to, from the pulpit. If they can show up at a place and here these beliefs reinforced, even if they have serious doubts or outright disbelief in core issues, so long as the pastor believes, they're ok.
As Rollins describes, this causes real problems for the pastor. She's just a person like anyone else and doubt is a real part of life. But in these scenarios, the pastor can't doubt, can't express anything but the party line in public or basically anywhere else without the entire congregation crumbling.
I think we could make some comments about theological education or sophistication or the time a pastor has spent dealing with issues of faith vs the average parishioner; we could also make comments about how we define belief and all that, but in the end, I think this is largely true in many situations.
I agree with Rollins that a good pastor makes people uncomfortable by (forcing sounds wrong, but it might be right) forcing parishioners to live in their doubt. His whole theology and practice is built on this notion, demystifying doubt, and banishing certainty. I tend to read and listen to his stuff, because I think it really rings true.
I was wondering lately, and maybe I should send this to Pete and see if he's willing to comment, but perhaps part of this process might be for a pastor to use that doubt transference (or maybe it should be called 'certainty transference') to his advantage.
If people are relying on a pastor for certainly, she has an ungodly responsibility, but it might also be a very godly opportunity. Would it be possible for that pastor to deepen and stretch the faith and beliefs on their congregation by simply being the one confident in "new" ideas? Rarely is an idea "new," of course, but there are certainly more responsible ways to deal with theology, life, scripture, etc than what colloquial or traditional "belief" might have us think.
Could a pastor help a congregation "evolve," just by leveraging that trust? Even if not, would it be an appropriate way for a pastor to challenge the congregation to deal with difficult issues and provide some growth benefit?
I really don't have an answer, because I'm not intimately involved in pastoral work at the moment. I suspect there are a lot more complications - namely belief connections to other pastors, family tradition, and decisions people made much earlier in life. We're not just attached to our pastors, we've transferred our certainty, likely, to many different people or groups over time - a kindly, faithful grandma, the teacher who helped you deal with puberty, some aphorism poorly remembered from a long-forgotten Sunday School class.
Perhaps the best thing to do is just convince people that no one else has the answers they seek. That certainly sounds a bit risky, especially in an evangelical environment that prioritizes certainty, but it might be just the thing to spur those disciples to stop cowering in the sanctuary and get out in the world.
I like the term evangelical because, in essence, it means I believe the love of Christ can and should change people in real and long-lasting ways. Faith is not something we put in our shopping cart to enhance our experience of life. We can't just add Jesus to our collection the way a museum curator acquires a new Monet. An evangelical understands faith as taking an abandoned warehouse and turning it into a museum. For a Christian, this transformational element is the gospel, the good news of Christ - which, in short, is simply that God loves the world, each and every one of us and every part of creation, enough to die for us; and that this kind of love really and actually can and does change the world. It overcomes violence and hatred, even death (that's why Easter is kind of a big deal).
I'm glad to be an evangelical, especially when I confuse other people who've so narrowly defined in along political, legalistic, and irrational lines. I wouldn't know what else to be, quite honestly. In the same vein, evangelism is the means by which evangelicals share this gospel (good news) with other people. It's the method by which we communicate the love of God to others so they too can understand and be changed by this radical idea.
Now, I chose the word 'idea' very specifically... because it's the wrong word.
For a long time, we evangelicals have taken the notion of evangelism to be mostly an act of the mind. From the very roots of the Reformation, 500 years ago, we've been afraid of looking too "Catholic," which really just means we want to have a very strict division between what we believe and what we do. We're scared of people thinking they can find salvation through good works. Life is not a game of karma - that idea tends to make God's love less radical and more contingent (you know, upon us actually being good people).
So we got all caught up in "believing," in people giving intellectual assent to the idea that God loves them unconditionally and then teaching them a series of (mostly) well-thought-out rational propositions about God and life. We essentially commodified faith and put it through the modern ringer of mass production. The most efficient means of evangelism was then entirely a game of the mind (although we've never been beneath using emotions to open that door to the mind).
None of this was malicious, of course, but it was very influenced by the world in which it emerged - a modern construct heavily centered on truth. It's all about truth. In fact, if you really press people for the simplest definition of evangelism, in a moment where they're not concerned about political correctness or proper marketing, most evangelicals will probably tell you evangelism is all about teaching people the truth.
This is where my thoughts have been for a while - since I guess I'm thoroughly postmodern enough to be uncomfortable with that idea. I'm comfortable enough saying God is truth (absolute truth, if you must) and that Jesus Christ is the embodiment and image of God. I'm less comfortable with the notion that I can or do understand Jesus well enough to properly communicate truth to someone else - at least in the reductionist, definitive way it seems so often presented by evangelicals.
I'm uncomfortable also, that our efforts at evangelism are really attempts to convert someone to our religion, not produce an actual gospel transformation in their lives. All of this is very much intertwined with the way we've combined Christ and Christianity into one entity in recent years - something I've written on before and will certainly write on again (because it's important), but moving beyond that notion here, I want to focus specifically on what conversion means and why we might need a new way of approaching it through evangelism.
I titled this "a new missiology" partly because I hate click-bait titles and I felt like "What's Wrong With Evangelism" might mislead people or create unnecessary controversy. Missiology is, after all, simply the study of evangelism and how the gospel is translated from one people to another (usually across cultures, but not necessarily). Missiology is essentially the study and theory of evangelism. It's our approach to sharing our faith with the world.
I used to be very much in the camp (a very popular one these days) that maintains our evangelism should be that of example. We should live out the love of Christ in our lives and communities and allow this visual, relational embodiment of gospel to influence and transform. I still think this is right - at least far more right that trying to argue or convince someone to assent to a specific set of beliefs. I also think its a beautiful description of the Church - the definition of how Christians should live in the world. God called us to be examples, not converters.
At the same time, I've come to appreciate the purpose of evangelism and the notion of missiology. I just think we need a new way of doing it.
Now, my missiologist friends will probably read this and say, "there's nothing new here;" I'm guessing much of this post could've been reproduced from missiology work done decades ago. It's like old hat in the realm of theory; I doubt it's so well known and accepted in general practice and certainly not by the majority of my fellow evangelicals in the world today. We're still caught up in this notion of being right, finding truth, and communicating such to other people.
I'd like to propose, as we bring the gospel into the world, by all means making it a relational, immersive, and felt experience. Live the gospel; it is THE most effective way to be faithful to Christ and the calling of every Christian. At the same time, this shouldn't make us afraid of or embarrassed by a good conversation. We just need to do it differently.
I'd argue our missiology should be rooted around inviting others to evangelize us. The best spiritual conversations I've ever had are with people who will never be convinced they're wrong - at least not by me. The conversations that prove mutually beneficial to deepen both partis' understanding of truth are those where we focus on disagreements. I want to hear why someone comes to a different conclusion than I do, then dig down into the assumptions and decisions that led to those conclusions to see where we've diverged.
Ultimately, every capable, thinking person makes their own decisions about truth and faith and life. Some people may be persuaded, but it's not because we convince them we're right or properly countered an argument, but because they've seen a different perspective that makes sense. That's what I want - not only for other people, but for myself as well. I want more truth, deeper understanding, better introspection. I want as many perspectives on love and life and truth as possible to best follow the leading of God - to be further evangelized.
This is why I hate apologetics. I don't use the word 'hate' lightly. I think it does nothing by harm and sets back the gospel in the world. Apologetics is essentially the rational argument for faith - it's a tool meant to refute the reasons people have for not believing and to convert them to a specific way of understanding God. It worked well in the modern age of reason and rationality, but I think it's far more beneficial to growing a religion than it is to spreading the gospel.
People just don't work that way.
Listen, I am the most rational, least emotional person you are likely to find (I won't say "in the world" because that's not rational, but I think I'm far enough to the end of the spectrum you're unlikely to find someone farther) - all of that apologetics stuff makes rational sense if you're trying to win some head-counting contest or if you're convinced you've got a handle on absolute truth.
I've just come to realize, in all my rationalization, that you can't reason your way to truth. It's a journey that must, first and foremost, be felt - but also one that doesn't end. I like how Peter Rollins says (quoting from John Caputo, who might've gotten it from someone else) "truth doesn't exist, it insists." If truth existed, we could grasp it, find it, control it, master it. But truth insists - it is constantly pushing us to more and deeper understanding in a spiral that will never end. This is why eternity makes sense to me. There's a lot of rational reasons for not believing in eternity (especially eternal life), but this notion of truth being a destination that never fully arrives is certainly a persuasive argument for it.
I know Christians like to claim "All truth is God's truth" - which is our safe, orthodox, non-idolatrous way of saying the more mystical "God is Truth; Truth is God" - but we're not very good at living it out. Our need for certainty keeps us from engaging in the kind of missiology that, I think, is more honest to the gospel we're trying to communicate.
Ultimately the evangelism we need is not "us" telling "them" what to believe,* not "us" challenging "them" to something new and different - the evangelism we need is challenging ourselves to believe more deeply and thoroughly. By that I mean not us looking for arguments we can tear down to assuage our doubts, but us genuinely exploring those doubts and uncertainties in hopes of finding better and more compelling truth. We can and must do this communally, together. But because we're searching for genuine truth and not interested in winning debates or defending dogma, we can do it with genuinely diverse people. We can use our own search to spur others on to the same kind of introspection and development. In essence, our attempt to be better Christians (or more like Christ) will push Muslims to be better Muslims and Buddhists to be better Buddhists and atheists to be better atheists and in the end, any push toward further development and internal challenge will lead us toward truth - and truth transcends whatever religious system we build around ourselves.
Now, I know, this is going to sound to people like I'm saying all religions lead to God. If you read the blog at all, you know I don't believe that. I do, though, believe that Christ is the embodiment of truth and that all religions, if pursued honestly and with an eye toward truth, will lead to Christ (even if they don't necessarily lead to Christianity). I believe God is calling all people at all times by all means to a greater, deeper, and stronger understanding of this radical love we call gospel - and that we can never get gospel mixed up with doctrine or dogma.
If we can get over that scary notion, perhaps we'll be free to evangelize and be evangelized and maybe, just maybe we'll all become a little more evangelical in the process. And, contrary to the way it looks in the world today, that's a very good thing.
*This is one of, although by far not the only, reason why it incenses me when people call a sermon "teaching" or, even worse, make a sermon "teaching," but that is definitely something for another day.
I think we latch onto these stories in pop culture as a way of encouraging one another. We hold up heroes and explore them as people to remind each other that we're all capable of great things. I'm not sure that practice is doing us any good - in fact, it might be doing us harm.
Oh, I think it's wonderful to explore and highlight the humanity of our heroes, but it shouldn't be to challenge us to greatness, it should be to challenge us to ordinariness. People who set out for greatness rarely achieve it, but those content to humbly focus on the life in front of them with full hearts often find themselves in the midst of great things.
Now, of course, talent will rise to the top - talented people, coupled with determination, emerge as people who get recognized, but it doesn't make them less human. They aren't superheros.
Perhaps there is a part of us that latches on to such people (or fictionalized superheroes) because we recognize a lack in us - talent, drive, determination that will likely keep us from being "top in our field." If so, then heroes become nothing but an escape, further removing us from the lives we actually lead.
I think there is some underlying drive in each of us to be superheros - we want to be separated from the rest and bathed in applause. Who wouldn't? It gets compounded by millenia of societal reinforcement, celebrating the best and brightest, smartest and strongest - we've come to just accept that some people, fitting particular categories, are just better than everyone else. They're heroes and we should aspire to be them or something like them. In reality, though, this only reinforces the position of power those labeled the heroes enjoy.
I'm not saying, "don't do great things," what I am questioning is how we define greatness. We tend to use exceptional categories, highlighting people who look least like everyone else. There is some merit there, I suppose, but it's easy to fall into the superhero trap working that way. I wonder if perhaps, as we measure greatness, the greatest thing we can do is to simply be present in your own life - and the greatness of this can only really be measured by the people around you (and can't be compared with much of anything).
Using this measure, it's easy to be exceptional, but very difficult to actually be excepted - to be singled out for larger fame. After all, they sell "World's Greatest Dad" mugs at every souvenir stand.*
How many lives get derailed by trying to be "something" - the best lawyer, the best athlete, the smartest guy in the room? When we make those things the focus of our lives, we miss out on our lives. This notion that fulfillment and satisfaction exist somewhere out there rather than right where you are is the key to doom. Peter Rollins often says, "I hope you achieve your dreams... so you can recognize they're not the answer to your problems."
This is seen no more truthfully than in the superhero myth - the notion that some people can do more and be more. It's the justification for a comparison society.* And while it seems like this only works out for those people who fare well in the comparison, we have to recognize it doesn't work so well for them either. We exalt people we admire to superhero status and in the process dehumanize them. They're no different than our super-villains - isn't that the point of these new Batman movies? No one wants to be the Joker, but we don't really want to be Batman either.
The solution is not to ignore great things; we need to see examples of real love, sacrifice, and commitment in our world. The solution is to celebrate greatness for its mundanity. Mother Theresa is all set to be St. Theresa of Calcutta here in a few months. She is a hero of mine. Her life accomplishments seem super-human, in all honesty - but if we look at her that way, we miss out on the real testimony she provides - "not great things, but small things with great love." You can be as successful in life as Mother Theresa and never get one column inch of press - you may not even be fully recognized by the members of your own family.
That's the rub, really. There are no superheroes. There are only humans. We should work to be good ones.
*There's a whole separate conversation here about comparison and how that works - clearly some people are better father's than others, but we really get into trouble when we try to rank everyone. Yes, it's easy to pick out the drunk who skips Christmas to gamble, but it's more difficult to parse rankings of greatness absent these obvious flaws. It's better to judge individuals by the needs of the relationship their in, rather than in comparison to others. Even if he's the only Dad on the planet, a drunk gambler is not going to do well on a performance review.
As regular readers of the blog (and my Facebook friends) will know, I've been reading a lot of Peter Rollins lately (I've been taking an online course he offers to work through his latest book, The Divine Magician). One of the more interesting things to me has been the way he talks about the importance of unbelief, specifically in communities with a fundamental belief.
He calls these communities Fundamentalist, but not really in the same sense we might - he simply means there's a core belief held to be fundamental to faith. His examples are: if we have enough faith, God will heal us and we don't need doctors; we are better off in the next life than this one; and any of our loved ones who don't clearly express a belief in Jesus are destined for a fiery burning hell.
His point is simply that these communities rely on unbelief to survive. Most people in them, you'll find, do consult doctors if someone breaks a leg, aren;t shooting their children to spare them the horrors of this world, and don't constantly hound their un-professed loved ones into Christian faith.
Now, this is overgeneralization, for sure, and I'd like to avoid debating the specifics on these points. It's overall idea that rings true to me - without some measure of lived doubt, these beliefs become absurd. In fact, Rollins argues the most dangerous members of these groups are the people who really do believe - their sort of irrational behavior in living out these beliefs completely show the underlying fundamental to be hollow if not horrific.
The interesting part for me, in thinking about the Church of the Nazarene, is how this doubt manifests itself in community. He talks about people on the margins feeling the doubt and trusting people closer to the center of the organization - meaning, they assume, people closer to the center of the group don't have the doubt or have less, so they're more comfortable with their own.
The problem arises as people move closer to the center - think a parishioner enters the course of study and becomes a minister, or a minister is elected DS or to some other leadership position, and so on. What they then realize is that no level of commitment to the idea can remove the doubts they have about the idea itself, and it creates a crisis.
I'll quote him here:
Unfortunately, its often the case that by the time someone takes his beliefs absolutely seriously and discovers their impotence, it's too difficult for him to leave. This is most obvious among religious leaders who have jobs within their institutions. For often they find the limits of their beliefs only when they are wholly dependent on their church for material support. Hence it becomes harder to leave at the very point they are most disillusioned.
This is why we often find it true that the closer we get to the inner circle of the church the more we find cynicism, hypocrisy, and repression. A layperson can avoid a confrontation with the impotence of her beliefs by imagining that if only she were more involved, things would be better. But those who are most involved often have no fantasy left to sustain them. They've been to the center and discovered the center is no better than the edges. But now they rely on the center for support, so they give themselves to support it.
Now, it should be noted that Rollins large project is to posit that religious conviction cannot fill the void in our hearts, in fact nothing can fill the void in our hearts and that it's the very attempt to fill such a void that Jesus can to free us from, so this should be read in that light - it's not that a particular belief or way of life is impotent, simply that these are impotent to make us feel completely satisfied.
Just in light of all the mess that's been (and continues) going on at the center of our denomination, this really struck home. While we might not be fundamentalists, our conception of sanctification certainly holds that place pragmatically in our structure and belief. We theologically nuance things, but at the core is this notion that once we're sanctified we shouldn't be going back to old ways of doing things - sanctified people can be trusted implicitly, our leaders are people of integrity at all times, etc.
I won't argue against holiness; I believe it strongly, but there is a sense of unbelief buried deep that allows us to live with it in our everyday lives. We're learning to express it more and more, but it's going to be tough to do so honestly at the very core of our structure.
I think it's certainly healthy for us to be able to say "yes, we believe in sanctification, but the way it ends up being worked out in real life is more than a little messy." Lots of us are more comfortable doing so these days, but we don't have a structure that can support such statements and perhaps it's taking a real toll on the people we put in the middle of that structure.
I won't say any of our leaders are going through this kind of existential crisis, but in reading the Rollins quote above, it sure brought to mind the events of the last couple years (and maybe longer).
This is the first of two posts inspired by something my father shared on Facebook the other day:*
Guns, for or against, is not the issue. Sin is the issue. Jesus is the answer for all of us. He is the Prince of Peace!
"Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them." – WILLIAM MCGURN, The Liberal Theology of Gun Control, Guns are what you talk about to avoid having to talk about Islamist terrorism., The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2015
As a counter (and for the purposes of this argument), we could also say, "Simply put, today's conservatism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So conservatives inveigh against specific types of people rather than the evil that lies within each of us."
These are equally accurate and equally inaccurate. Accurate insomuch that they describe real positions real people hold, but, of course, inaccurate because they fail to describe the real motivations of everyone a speaker might term conservative or liberal. In short, they're convenient excuses - half-truths we tell ourselves to prevent us from challenging our own comfortable feelings.
I can hear Peter Rollins in the back of my head right now, maybe because I've been reading and hearing too much of him lately or maybe because he's right, but he'd be saying, "of course none of us is comfortable with these strongly held beliefs, but we cling to them strongly in order to avoid the real uncertainty of unbelief."
What he's saying is that many gun control advocates really do respect and covet the notion of personal security, recognize the importance of personal freedom, but don't see an easy compromise, so they cling to an intracted position as a means of avoiding the messy compromise of reality. In the same way, gun control opponents really do recognize the damage guns do in society and struggle with the tension between freedom and safety, but holding to a definitive position is simply easier for the brain to handle, at least on the surface and in the short term.
We use convenient excuses to avoid uncertainty.
Rollins always uses the example of religious belief. Some people believe deeply in faith healing, but will take their grandmother to the hospital when she's having a heart attack, because, despite their genuine and sincerely held belief, there's enough unbelief to act more rationally when the situation calls for it. He argues that the real danger in these groups is not from those who overtly challenge core beliefs, but those who really do believe them without question. It's not the person who laughs at faith healing who's the enemy; the doubter merely helps to bring the faithful closer together. The real enemy is the person who will let grandma die while they pray over here, when there's an ER right down the street. Those people possess no unbelief at all, and they're dangerous.
This also proves the benefit and the danger of convenient excuses. The line above is certainly true of some people - those are the true believers, right? But it put the "other" in a Catch-22. If someone defending gun control as a core belief is faced with this accusation, they likely agree, but can't rightly say, "you're right, this describes some people in our movement," because then they're recognizing the very irrational, true believers, who pose a threat to their position, the ones who might expose it for the horror it is.
Similarly, someone from the gun rights movement can't rightly say "true, this scapegoating is wrong and an easy way out," without betraying the loyalty they have to the underlying message, without exposing the true believers as a problem to the position.
We're seeing this in our political process right now. We've got Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, each of whom may or may not be true believers, but two men who are certainly convincing others of the fidelity of their ideologies. They representing the true believers that those in the establishment can't rightly denounce and can't rightly support. Most people in both parties recognize the ideological comfort Sanders and Trump provide, but also recognize the untenable reality of either actually becoming President.
The convenient excuses are, at the same time, being embodied like never before, yet are also being unmasked in uniquely real and uncomfortable ways.
I think about how this plays out in my own faith tradition. Despite our best theological efforts to do otherwise, the Church of the Nazarene still largely paints an expectation of perfection in its teaching and preaching. We're at least expected to be getting better as people over the years. This manifests itself in genuine difficulty dealing with regression. An alcoholic is welcome to be a part of the church, even as they are still dealing with their disease, but once they have conquered it (however that's described) and gained sort of full membership in the eyes and inner-workings of the community, any relapse or recurrence creates existential problems. Our learned theology doesn't have a way with dealing well with such relapse. Once a sin is defeated, it's supposed to stay dead.
Now that bears out in reality with the allowance of some sins to remain. If things are unspoken, or the individual in question doesn't take too prominent a role, things can be overlooked. Lots of Nazarene congregations have ashtrays by the back door and lots of people smoke, despite its denunciation. Part of the reason is that we have grace, which is real and genuine, part of the reason is because it's easy to allow some "smaller" problems as a trade off for dealing with big ones.
Now, of course this isn't universal - there are lots of communities who find awesome and graceful ways of handling even the most difficult challenges, but it would be tough to argue they are the majority. At the very least, that argument is a convenient excuse - partly true in fact, but indicative of a larger problem.
I'm sure it stems from our primitive brain functions that want to reduce everything to black and white, right and wrong. We want categorization. This is a good person, that is a bad person. This is a moral act, that is an immoral act. Convenient excuses allow us to do that, because they're clothed in real, actual, undeniable truth. We fight over them because admitting any real truth in someone else's convenient excuse forces us to throw away the convenient excuses we're using to avoid our own messy situations.
Rollins talks about unmasking these convenient excuses (although I'm not sure he uses that term) and how doing so creates high levels of anxiety. Our natural reaction is do push down the anxiety, usually by denying the problem, fighting to defend a convenient excuse (either as right or wrong). He suggests and I'd like to find (help create) a community of people who feel safe enough with each other to get beyond the convenient excuses, who form a supportive enough community that we can faithfully live in the mess of uncertainty and healthily deal with the anxiety it produces rather than running from it.
*This should in no way imply I am accusing my father or anything other than having good taste in quotes. I've seen a lot of people use the quote to make various inferences about policy and beliefs that I'm not sure are implicit in the quoted statement above. We all sort of have to deal with our reactions to it honestly.
The example he uses is SS agents coming to the door of a home during Nazi occupation and asking if there are any Jews present. The owner, knowing there are Jews present, but not wanting to turn them over, faces an ethical quandary. In reality, some people did in fact tell the "truth" and leave those Jews they were protecting in the hands of God. Others "lied" and continued to hide the Jews. Rollins argues that denying the presence of Jews is actually the truer statement, because it positively transforms reality.
Coming from a scriptural perspective, if Jesus is "the truth," then anything resembling Christ or in line with his life and teachings would also be truth. Rollins argues that saving Jews during the holocaust is inarguably true, no matter what factual inaccuracies one must espouse to do it.
Yes, it's a convenient example - one difficult to disagree with, but I think the larger notion of truth as an action that positively transforms the world helps in a lot of situations.
There's the old trope of a wife asking her husband if a dress makes her look fat. As a husband, you know there are some realities to navigate there. It may very well be that the wife has chosen a dress that is unusually unflattering and she would look (and feel) much better in something else. Saying as much is an important truth in the moment, because there's a potential she'll be embarrassed later on. Now if the wife has simply chosen one of many dress options that all make her look equally beautiful (even if she might actually be overweight), you say as much, because it is also true. There is no other answer you can give which will positively transform reality.
Again, this is a convenient and common example that doesn't always translate to real life - but I imagine you can imagine a lot of scenarios where this is a helpful guide (certainly more helpful than asking yourself, "is this an accurate description of reality?).
Putting our words up against some arbitrary definition of "true" or "factual" is ultimately pointless. The point in life is not to be accurate (especially since we've long entered a period where bias and perspectival error are well accepted and few people believe truth, by that definition, is even possible), it is to positively transform the world.
Of course, this adds a layer for Christians (or really anyone) when debating how to speak truth. It certainly seems easier to say whatever will make our own lives easier and, in a way, one could argue that positively transforms the world from my perspective. Using this definition of truth, though, requires a willingness to submit our own preferences and ease to the greater good. Something we're not always very good at.
Then again, using the standard definition of truth requires much the same thing - only it gives us less room to justify our actions and correct or ethical. This idea from Rollins makes more space for interpretation and disagreement, but we live in a world where that's reality anyway.
In any event, I'm not at a place where I'm adopting this notion of truth wholesale anyway, but I do think it's worth thinking about - or perhaps the larger point it's making about how we approach ethics. I'd love to hear what other people think, though. Chime in.
I asked specifically about the Kingdom of God and the way Christ talks about the Kingdom in scripture. That sure can come off as something to be sought after and it provides a picture of fulfillment. Rollins responded by going back to a dynamic he's spoken of before, but which struck me in a different way this time. He talked about the Kingdom as something that does not exist, but that insists. In other words, the Kingdom is just an idea, a notion - like justice or peace or democracy - that drives us to act. We seek justice; we seek the Kingdom. These concepts bring to mind various ideas about how the world needs to be different. But, Rollins warns, if anyone ever says they've found "the Kingdom" or can perfectly describe it, we'd better be wary of trouble.
I connected this with the old mathematical trope: I can walk half the distance from me to you an infinite number of times without ever reaching you. Of course this doesn't make sense in the real world, but it is mathematically logical. There are an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1, for example. We can go half the distance 1/2, and then go half again, 1/4. We can do this forever and never, ever get to zero. I think this is analogous to what Rollins meant - that we can move towards justice or the Kingdom or whatever else and do so continually, but we aren't going to reach it. The Kingdom insists; it doesn't exist.
Now there are some eschatological questions raised here - namely, do we think there will ever be a time when the Kingdom is fully realized? That's certainly the traditional Christian hope. I suspect Rollins will address this next week in the course, but I also suspect he'll say it doesn't matter. We should be focused on the now not on the if - that very notion of future completeness can get us right back into the failed self-fulfillment mess that started this post. I'll leave this question for another day (although, personally, I suspect the reality of eternity in Christian thought, that there is no end, probably means there's also no end to the insistence of the Kingdom, but that's just me).
To get to the subject of the title, though, it made me immediately think of our current social battles for equality, particularly this battle between #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter. I think what we're seeing is the insistence of the latter. All lives do indeed matter, at least we all (or most of us) affirm as much. It's an intellectual truth. At the same time we do not exist in a world where it's an actual truth. Life is thrown around and thrown away all the time. Particularly, the lives of minority and historically disadvantaged groups more than others. Essentially the tension is between those saying, "just because we don't see the reality of our belief doesn't make our intentions less sincere," and those saying, "the very fact that our beliefs are not reality speaks to the insufficiency of our resolve."
In the end, though, I think the first step for both parties to acknowledge is that equality is not possible. I think, deep down, we know that #AllLivesMatter will never be a physical reality, but we might hope for a world in which arbitrary factors like race or gender don't predispose one life to matter more than another. No one is really expecting utopia, just a sort of flawed yet unbiased world.
Perhaps we need to take a step further and recognize that equality is not a possible result either.
That is not to say equality can't be insistent in its non-existence, because it has to be. We must be pushed toward equality with constant fervor and impassioned commitment. We're just not going to get there.
The very fact that we're different means we'll be treated differently. Now we can certainly improve the lot of those who are left out or left behind, certainly, but we're not going to get there. And, if for some reason, we DO get there, we create a society in which every individual is seen as equal to everyone else, we're still not going to be equal. Why? Because we're all different, with different abilities, actions, feelings, beliefs. We're different people; we're not capable of treating different people in the same way.
Say we have an unemployed factory worker with three kids and a mortgage in rural Ohio. If the person in question is male, he's going to have an easier time navigating his situation than if he were female. If the person is white, he's going to have a more difficult time than if he were black. This is not good. No one thinks it is, but it is reality.* We can work to make the differences expressed here less different, and that would be great, but we're not going to eliminate them.
This notion, that equality is impossible could seem to undercut the very power of the movement for equality, but I'd argue it may actually strengthen that power. Now, instead of chasing an impossible dream, we are empowered to chase an intermediate one. Does anyone think Martin Luther King believed equality would happen if all people had fair and equal access to the ballot box? Not a chance, but he understood the massive move toward equality it represented. He recognized as much in his speeches, "I may not get to the mountain top with you..." None of us is going to get to the mountain top, but we need that mountain to motivate us. We need the concepts of justice and equality to insist on something different than what we have.
From the perspective of power (as an educated, white, American male) its an extremely helpful statement to make - that equality is impossible, because it removes the burden of fairness. We powerful people are suckers for fairness. We're allergic to anything that might make our lives more difficult. We're the first to call "reverse discrimination" if it seems like the equality train is moving too quickly. Recognizing that equality is not an exact science, not a true reality, moves the discussion from, "will this change harm anyone (namely, me)," to "will this change improve the lot of those who've been disadvantaged (namely, someone else)?"
Power will continue to be power and people like me will probably continue to oppose moves toward equality that minorly inconvenience us just because we can, but the ethical bargaining position from which we operate will not be nearly as strong. We will no longer be able to say, "this solution doesn't produce equality," because that's not the goal. Incremental steps become the only acceptable steps and much more difficult to argue against.
I've rambled on far longer than I planned, so I'll leave it there. This doesn't just apply to equality, but across the board with so called societal virtues. This way of thinking undercuts the perverse ideology that so often bogs down our societal systems and helps us focus more on the moment. I think it is a genuine path forward and something important for everyone to consider.
*I recognize that there are people who would refuse to agree this disparity exists. Rollins has some thoughts on this as well - namely that this is a subconscious form of denial. Likely the believe so greatly in the goodness and rightness of the system that they refuse to see its flaws. Often we are incapable of facing the real brokenness in our systems and relationships, even when they're right in front of our face. You see this played out sometimes when a man is accused of sexually abusing children, often the wife is the most resolute believer in his innocence simply because recognizing the obvious truth is truly too much to bear. Our national narrative of equality and freedom is often so ingrained in us any challenge to it is unbearable and must be denied, disproved, and destroyed.
Rollins challenges the notion of Batman - a billionaire who devotes his life to ridding his beloved city of street crime, largely due to the trauma of seeing his own parents murdered before his eyes. He diverts huge sums of money from his hulking family business to make this possible. Rollins wonders if, perhaps, Bruce Wayne might've made more of a difference in Gotham City if he'd simply used those vast sums of money to develop social institutions, like schools and public service organizations, to actually create the structures that support a stronger city.
Then Rollins then goes a step further, positing not only that Batman uses altruism as an excuse for pure revenge, but that Bruce Wayne doesn't really want a better city, since a city in which the poor have access to resources and education (and hope) is likely a city that will challenge the hegemony of his own business and ultimately affect his billionaire playboy lifestyle.
It's just classic - a great example of what I often call the machine analogy. If society is like a machine, Batman is devoting his time and resources to change what's coming out of the machine - Rollins wonders whether those resources would be better spent fixing the machine so it produces a product more to his liking, rather than trying to constantly alter the product that comes out. The extra step, recognizing that Wayne's own monopolistic interests and likely part of the cause for the problems in the machine in the first place. True transformation always costs us something; that's why we're so terrified of it.
But anyway, I was reading this book (which I find stronger and more accessible now) and there's some really great stuff there. I shared a quote on Facebook yesterday - there will probably be at least one more blog post from that re-reading. He hits on this idea that what we consider dichotomies don't necessarily have to be. I don't know if it was one thing in particular (if it was, that location or quote is lost to me already), but I had this realization about myself and my evolution of thought and belief and faith over time.
Growing up, I felt like the big questions of faith were real mysteries - why are we here, how did God make this world, what do heaven and hell look like, how is the world going to end - typical big question stuff was just beyond me. I mean, I knew the "right" answers to those things, but my understanding of them was far from concrete. At the same time, though, I was pretty darn certain about what the right thing to do was in any given moment. I had this ethical framework that, even if I didn't always live up to it, was very black and white.
It was a sort of marriage of mystery and certainty and really left me empty and unsatisfied.
The real realization, though, that I had whilst reading yesterday, was that I still have a great marriage of mystery and (fairly) certain-ty, but it's the complete opposite of what that looked like as a child (and probably up until about the period where I first read this book). I generally feel like I've got the big questions figured out. I could explain to you how I view the formation, purpose, and future of existence, given the realities of science and scripture and human nature and discovery. Those views might be nuanced a bit over time, but I'm pretty confident I've got a good framework from which to build.
But the mystery these days is about the details, the day to day stuff, choices and relationship and interactions with the world. I'm essentially asking - "So I live in X world, what does that mean for my schedule today?" The answer to that question is really the one that drives my imagination and discussion and passion these days. Now obviously those discussions move backward to the assumptions I've made at the beginning and I'm always looking for good critiques and challenges to those assumptions, but the real meat of the faith mystery is how to live in each moment.
I find this marriage between confidence and uncertainty to be beautiful and life-giving and brilliant. Maybe because a willingness to hold things lightly is sort of built in to that overall structure of understanding, it's just less stressful, I don't know, but it was very interesting to immediately sort of see in my own life how things have been sort of paradoxically melded together in my own journey of belief moving forward.
Perhaps one of the things I like about Rollins is that he's constantly focused on the day-to-day. That first book especially emphasized the importance of relationship and reality to our doing of theology and belief - challenging us to embrace the bias inherent in each of us and use it for the purpose of strengthening our position in the world.
To put it simply - God loves the world; God's love is transforming the world; Love will win - so what?
It's mighty beautiful to say, "I've got it all figured out," and "I have nothing at all figured out." To make it fancy, you might say, I've discovered my epistemological framework to be both radically known and radically mysterious at the same time. THAT is simply beautiful and invigorating and it's what drives me to continue living and exploring such intelligible and inscrutable faith.
Maybe it's as simple as our difficult relationship with the word faith. Is it simply something we claim? Do we say the words, make intellectual assent, choose to join - is that all it takes?
Yes and no.
Certainly, being willing to claim Christianity with a gun to your head speaks to the importance of that association. Being identified as a Christian was really important to these people. I can't even begin to imagine the difficulty of that decision. I remember, as a child, being terrified that this might someday be a reality for me. I'm sure it wasn't constant, but it seemed like a constant challenge from people in the church - "is your faith strong enough to stand up to torture." I remember spending significant adolescent time worried about this (Lord, help us be better). I was worried mostly because I was pretty sure I'd wuss out. Now, as an adult, I don't worry. I know I'd wuss out and deny Christ. I'm not proud of it - but if all it took were saying a couple words to save my life - I'm pretty sure I'd say them (and I'm confident God would forgive me).
But it's not about the words, right? That's the whole point.
In Roman times, no magistrate would have to ask the Christians if they were Christian. Being a Christian was a very defined lifestyle - it was obvious to anyone who saw you interacting (or not interacting) in society. Christians did things differently. People knew it. When Christians were being killed, it wasn't for some statement they made or idea they professed; it wasn't even an important identity they assumed - it was a life they lead, choices they made. The original Christian martyrs were killed for a long period of faithfulness over time that rubbed against what was expected in society.
Yes, there might be a broad dictionary definition of "martyr" that includes this occurrence in Oregon, but it's a definition lacking real distinction and context.
Those who died in this most recent shooting certainly died because their Christian identity was important to them, but it wasn't martyrdom, it wasn't a religious killing. The shooter had no way of knowing the faith of these people, he could only ask how they identified. These people certainly showed more courage than I'd be able to muster in that situation and I hope they all died with the confidence of knowing God's peace and love, but this simply wasn't a religious statement. This was the terrible action of a sick man who'd clearly been hurt by Christians in his life.
We could say these victims died not for their faith, but for the lack of faith shown by others.
It doesn't undermine the faith of those who died - I don't know then anymore than the gunman did, so it's impossible to even speculate. It doesn't put into doubt their faith claims or the value of their lives. It doesn't even reduce the impact of such courageous testimony. I'm just not sure it qualifies as martyrdom. Martyrdom takes more than a moment.
The priest who's gunned down by gang members because he's pulling their runners off the streets and into afterschool programs is a martyr. The woman, beaten and killed for helping prostitutes to freedom is a martyr. Their words might be the impetus for the trigger to be pulled, but it was their actions that got them killed.
The other element that seems important is society's response. A martyr's death is typically cause for celebration or indifference among the general population. A martyr doesn't die to collective horror. Christians were martyred as entertainment in Rome, people bought tickets to cheer as they died. Many martyrs toil in obscurity around the world, giving their lives for a moment of solace amongst the suffering of the world's poor.
When that gunman opened fire on the Sikh temple, it wasn't because of the faith of the adherents. They died because some guy confused them with Muslims. Even if they'd been actual Muslims, it still wouldn't have been a death for their faith, but a death because someone else, somewhere else represented their faith in ways they wouldn't agree with.
If some Roman were hauled before the authorities by mistake - he'd be shouting at the top of his lungs, "I'm not a Christian," but those words certainly aren't enough. He'd have to prove his identity and he'd do it by pointing to his actions. This is what I do because I'm not one of those Christians. He'd get off, if he got off, because he proved his life looked differently than the Christian lives they were out to end.
Peter Rollins has a great, harrowing short story in his book, The Orthodox Heretic, where a man is acquitted of being a Christian and robbed of martyrdom despite his admission and attempts to prove his faithfulness. He's acquitted because his lifestyle doesn't show anything but church attendance and Bible reading. There's no evidence of a specifically Christian lifestyle.
What if the first person asked in Oregon hadn't been a Christian, but thought saying "yes," would save his life? Would that claim have made him a Christian? Likewise, what if the second person asked, knowing what answer meant life, had said, "no," despite a long life of faith and Christian action, would it have somehow invalidated her claim to Christ?
There's got to be something more.
This shouldn't discount the tragedy of events, but it, perhaps, should be an avenue of challenge for Christians. It does indeed take an incredible amount of courage to claim Christ, knowing it could mean your immediate death - in some ways, though, it takes as much, if not more, courage to live out your faith over the course of decades - to love the unlovable, to be on the side of the rejected, to move against culture and be labeled an oddball.
I'm not sure I have the courage to do either one. I do, know, though, I wouldn't want to be known as a martyr if I happen to die for the words that I say (or write). We need to be careful about how and when we use words like "martyr," because there really are people in this world who continue to face the kind of situation first century Christians faced - where their actions equate to a death sentence - their whole life is lived in danger.
We live in a world, specifically in a culture, that's become increasingly obsessed with masking political maneuverings in religious language. The evangelical subculture seems even more bent on using the language of religious war. We really need to push back against it, naming an condemning power games cloaked in religious language.
A shooting, like Columbine, like the one in Oregon, is tragic. It is a senseless loss of human life, a great tragedy for those families who lost loved ones and for the community and nation as a whole. It's a detriment to creation and something that should spur us to live differently. I'm just not comfortable calling it martyrdom. Making it religious seems almost a distraction from the realities involved. Let's call all killing tragedy and work to prevent it moving forward.
Then, on Friday night, for just $10, I (and about 100 others) were treated to 90 minutes of musician Derek Webb, playing and talking from his living room via the interwebs. He took requests and interacted with the relatively small audience and is going to start doing similar broadcasts regularly. Derek Webb is a fantastic songwriter and one who inspires my own writing with his creativity and skill. He's an evolving spiritual thinker who provided and important soundtrack to much of my own growth and maturation during college years and after.
Both of these things are quite mundane for the world we live in now, but they're pretty revolutionary ways for artists and thinkers to not only have their work engaged and critiqued, but to make a living. Concerts are really starting to price out a lot of people (myself included) with their associated costs and expenses - this is a great evolution, allowing someone like Derek Webb to interact more directly with listeners.
For Rollins, who can only speak so often and in so many places, but perhaps has a widespread, eclectic audience, he can bring people together in ways that are mutually beneficial and cost effective for both parties. I'm not sure exactly what all these possibilities hold for the future, but it's exciting to know and experience the new possibilities.
It's gotten me thinking more about art and it's place in society. For a while now we've (the collective, societal 'we've') really only valued art for what it fetches in the open market. Someone may be very talented, but they're a good artist if they can sustain themselves with their art. It's led to this crazy market for fine art and, as mentioned, crazy expensive concerts. Even those artist who tour constantly or sustain themselves with niche communities of support, it's often a day-to-day, week-to-week existence often supplemented with something else they do.
We've lost the real, intangible value of art in society.
It doesn't always pay off. Sometimes good art isn't worth a dime because it's not entirely comfortable or welcomed. This means art is rarely appreciated for its own sake - for its contribution to society. When politicians talk about budget cuts, the Arts are often the first to go. Symphonies and museums are working hard to build self-sustaining endowments, expecting an inevitable end of public support.
The fact those endowments are, in places, succeeding is testament to the reality that some people still value art for more than it's monetary worth - and are willing to put some monetary value on the intangible benefit it provides to all of us, individually and as a collective. Hopefully this new direct connect-ability will provide a better way for our society to recognize and support the artists among us - that it becomes not just a benefit to me, sitting on my couch, but to the artists themselves and the larger world.
*I include Rollins in this conversation about art, because as much as he's incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable, he is ultimately a storyteller. His best work is framed narratively, using his extensive background to inform the larger art with which he teaches and attempts to live.
I know I've written here before about my journeys with prayer. I'm not the kind of guy who can sit still and (mentally or physically) say words as if there were a conversation happening. It's easy enough in a corporate setting, where we're composing a prayer from a group of people, we're expressing our collective thoughts and desires. It makes much more sense there. In a personal vein, though, it's always seemed strange to me.
There's the childhood question, "If God knows what we're thinking, why do we have to say it or even direct it intentionally towards God?" I'm not sure how some strong Calvinist would answer that question, but having grown up in a free-will tradition I was always told that our requests can influence God's actions. It was also sort of a warning not to ask for the wrong things since God might choose to give them to you.
I don't know if there's time or if my brain has enough capacity to properly discuss the theological problems with that particular exchange, but I'm finding myself more and more in agreement with my childhood self.
As I said, I've never been that kind of pray-er. Perhaps if I find myself in a particular difficult mental or emotional spot, that kind of prayer can be cathartic or provide enough rest and/or perspective to stabilize a person for functional life tasks. But that is ultimately was Rollins was getting at, right? He was saying people pray because they can't entirely believe God knows everything and acts lovingly all the time.
It should be said he's not at all critical of this - and neither am I. Doubt is an important part of faith and the ability to express our doubts in prayer can be vital for us. It's reaching out a hand during a scary movie, just some gesture to remind ourselves there's someone else out there. We're not in this alone.
I've been mulling, though, if some of my personal peculiarities make belief an easier challenge than it is for other people. I really don't feel the need to pray - at least in the way Rollins refers to it here. I commune with God. I spend time in silence or contemplation and, from time to time, I'd eve claim God has spoken to me. I find moments of great spiritual connection that seem entirely in line with the broader view of prayer we find in scripture and Christian tradition.
I don't do a lot of praying, though, in the typical sense. I wonder if that's because I really don't have a bit of atheism in me. There's lots of things I question, things I hold at an intellectual arms length for whatever reason, but I don't doubt God.
I'm not saying this to prove some superiority. On the contrary, I'm saying this to sort of confess some of my failings.
Apparently, the typical person is very in touch with their own feelings, but struggles to translate those feelings into deep belief. This is generally the purpose of counseling or psychotherapy, to sort through the feelings and figure out what's true. Recently I've discovered I may be the (surprise, surprise) opposite, functioning on some odd plane where I reason out core beliefs, determining what's truth without feeling anything at all.
People who know me well have often joked I have Asperger's or some unspecified developmental disorder because of my intense inability to understand how other people think (and often how to relate with them). I've never been officially diagnosed or anything, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. I do have what seems to be an uncanny ability to act based on beliefs I've worked out nowhere else besides my own head.
I believe all people are good and valuable, that everyone deserves the same treatment without priority or other attachment. It's not difficult for me to treat my family the same way I try to treat everyone or vice versa. (Now there is some difference in terms of responsibility - I have to be a parent and feed and clothe my child, I made promises to my wife - those are different than simply treating people a certain way.) Let's say my brother had some disease that would likely lead to a kidney transplant down the road, but some stranger needed one immediately; I'm pretty sure my only internal conflict would be over the social convention of prioritizing family, not the actual core rightness of the decision.
I'm not saying I can operate completely devoid of emotion, but I certainly seem a lot better at it than most people. This, of course, often makes things difficult. I make choices that seem logical and right to me, which seem to annoy or offend and definitely puzzle those around me. I've sort of gotten used to it by now. As much as it makes some things difficult, it certainly makes others much easier.
I believe God exists. I believe God is at work to bring about the redemption and fulfillment of all that exists and that God will act in perfect love to accomplish this inevitability. Even if this doesn't seem like what's happening in the world around us, I believe it indeed is happening.
Because of that, it doesn't make a lot of sense to ask God for anything. God certainly knows what bothers me. I can express frustration for injustice and impatience in seeing it rectified; I often do. Ultimately, those things will not help change much, since God is doing as much as God can or will do at all times.
I certainly believe God can, does, and will change, based on circumstances and the choices of we humans with whom God interacts. I'm not at all saying things are necessarily determined (shoot, I don't even believe the specifics of the future are knowable, by God or anyone else), I just recognize that God knows and understands the intricacies of my mind and actions regardless of whether I communicate them or not. Whatever God will take into account from me, is happening, whether I say it or not.
Ultimately, what I'm saying is what I think Peter Rollins was getting at - we pray for ourselves. I pause to pray before meals and have taught my daughter to do the same, not because God needs this, but because that pause helps us reflect on where this food comes from and all the way's we're provided for outside our own capacity to survive.
It's not that those words need to be said or that if I don't say them - or even think them - God will some how act differently towards me. I don't believe that at all. I do believe that perhaps I'll act differently towards the world, I may stop believing those things, if I don't pray. Intellectually, practically, those prayers are entirely for me.
This is why there was some joy in hearing Rollins talk this way about prayer being for atheists. It does come at the moment of our weakness, specifically for our personal formation. Prayer can change things - it changes us, based on how we do it and what we believe. If you're never thinking about a larger reality and the way you're supposed to act in the world (and how your beliefs influence those actions), then, yes, you may have a problem. Prayer might be a good thing for you. But if you are taking that time to implement practices of evaluation and formation, working to live rightly in the world, you probably shouldn't feel guilty about your lack of prayer - you may, in fact, really be praying far more than you ever suspect.
*As I was looking for the right image to put with the post above, I discovered this interesting one:
This is what I mean when I tell some of my atheist friends they might be Christian and not know it. I've got no problem with this at all - you could replace the word "Atheist" with "Christian" and be just as accurate. Life is all about what we believe to be the best way to act in the world and why.
My faith, at the time, was pretty securely encamped in the "fire insurance" department. I understood faith entirely in terms of afterlife. We are Christians because being Christians is how we get to heaven. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, it seems very unlikely I will rise from the dead and that would make faith ultimately as pointless as all get out. Why would I give up sex and drinking and movie theaters and prom if I'm not getting anything out of it?
I look at faith quite differently these days. In fact, my faith no longer has anything to do with afterlife. Gospel, as I see it, is not "good news about heaven," but entirely good news about life here and now. The Kingdom of God has come, Jesus was its first citizen, and we don't have to wait to heaven to join in. My faith moved from something (at least intellectually) useless in the present, to something of utmost importance for the here and now.
I see the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as both teaching us and enabling us to live life as God always intended. Resurrection means that life will continue forever. Not in some disembodied heaven, but in a reconstituted here. I see death as merely a pit stop in the midst of life, not the end.
In fact, if I take stock of what are essential faith claims in my life, I have only two. First, God is at work in the world - active, not passive. The second, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. If anything, the resurrection of Jesus is even MORE important to my faith now than it was as a formative youngster trying to make sense of those crazy liberal heretics way back when.
Now, though, my attitude towards them is a bit different.
I still disagree, although not with confusion and malice, perhaps with some grudging respect. I still scratch my head in wonder, but I wonder more if it's something I'm lacking as opposed to them.
You see I need resurrection. Not because it's essential to my explanation of God and faith, but because I'm a bit selfish. To me (and I imagine to most Christians out there), resurrection symbolizes confirmation that what Jesus was saying is really true, trustworthy. Jesus said and did some pretty crazy things: love your enemies, give to whomever asks without expecting anything in return, let the dead bury their own dead, don't worry about tomorrow (what you will eat or what you will wear). There's a really radical element of love and non-violence that works against everything our instincts and culture tell us about how to live. It's different.
What's more, it doesn't work out too well in the short term. Culture abhors distinctness. There's a lot of pressure to fall in line. People who refuse to fight often die, they're taken advantage of. Life isn't quite as easy if you go "the gospel way."
So I need resurrection, because then I can at least tell myself this is all for a reason. This world might seem to work one way, but Jesus is God and made this whole thing and it will all be different someday and for eternity; it's already different, we just don't always see it. That's what I believe. It's what I preach every time I step into a pulpit, it's what shapes my life (or what I hope shapes my life).
Now I don't think any of that would be less true without the resurrection. If Jesus is who he says he is and if what he offers as a lifestyle really does work best for life in the world (and I believe both of those to be true), then it doesn't matter if Jesus rose from the dead. It really doesn't. Truth is truth no matter what.
This is precisely the argument some of those magical liberals claim to believe - all the same stuff I do, but without any "proof." Resurrection is at least a hypothetical guarantee. Guarantees are comforting. But the guarantee is only as good as the product being sold. If the Jesus way isn't really the right way, the hope of resurrection is pretty worthless.
That's why I've come to admire those who believe without believing.
Peter Rollins tells a story (which, thanks to Google Books you can read here - starting on page 67 if it doesn't take you to the right place). It's about a group of disciples who leave Jerusalem immediately after the crucifixion, traveling to a far off place and establishing a society where they live in imitation of Christ, not because they believe anything will come of it after their deaths, but simply because they believe his way of life is beautiful.
Not everyone who claims Christ, but denies the resurrection are functioning on this sort of holy plane. Often a skepticism of the supernatural belies a real lack of commitment, rather than a deeper faith. At the same time, I see in myself a real deficiency when it comes to faith. I think I'm lazy enough and selfish enough to just skip the whole endeavor if it won't mean anything beyond this life. I'm sure I'd still be kind and considerate to people when the moment arose - we all want to believe ourselves "good" in that way - but I certainly wouldn't organize my life around a selfless pattern of living. I'd work to get mine. I'd want to do it in a way I could live with, but it sure wouldn't be gospel.
I believe in the resurrection. I'd have no faith without it. I believe the man, Jesus Christ, died and is now again living. I need the resurrection. I need it in so many ways. I just don't believe God needs the resurrection. I believe God used the resurrection for exactly the purpose of promise - showing us what the future entails. At the same time, I believe God could have done things differently and that the life of Christ would be worth the same, even if he'd never been raised from the dead.
I think we have to get there. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. Because, in the end, if the life we're living only has meaning when it's over, there really is no meaning to life at all.
Whatever systems and structures we have in place to govern us are either insufficient or have been sufficiently eroded to the point of ridiculous chaos. There are a lot of people for whom this is the last straw. So many of my young friends are running swiftly from denominations. I am part of a generation with no trust in institutions; those younger than me, even more so. It's difficult enough to get young people to understand how long it takes to affect change in big organizations, let alone when they're lead poorly.
I was, and often am, considered one of those impatient young people.* Although I've been following the administrative and legislative workings of this denomination since 1993 and at best things have stayed the same.
In thinking about this generational - philosophical - social - cultural shift, I have to wonder if this isn't one of the hallmarks of the next Reformation.
As I said, I was thinking about this anyway - yesterday's mind-blowing screw up (and I use the word "screw" there, to be as gracious and conciliatory as I can right now) was simply an unfortunately timely example.
There's this narrative about the development of Western thought - that just about every 500 years, something big changes the way we live and process information. Starting with the birth of Christ, there follows the Fall of the Roman Empire around 500, the emergence of more-or-less modern nations under Charlemagne around 1000, and finally the Enlightenment around 1500. There have been corresponding religious upheavals at the same time as response to such epochal changes.
So, we're due for the next one. Surely this is the transition from modern to post-modern eras. That is a given, even as we're not entirely sure what it means. Thus, there is a similar shift occurring in Christianity as these changes filter into western religious life.
One of the basic elements of the Protestant Reformation was the challenging of mediated religion. For many centuries the Church told people they needed a priest to go between them and God. Martin Luther (and others) rejected this mediated religion and thus ushered in the modern age of individualism (for better or worse).
Certainly this is not an all-encompassing claim, but I suspect that one of the notable elements of this next transition will be a parallel rejection of mediation by religion.
I've written before about religion, and the ways in which we all have religion (which is really just the things we do based on our beliefs about the world). In this post, I refer primarily to organized religion, an organized system of belief and practice designed to create boundaries between membership and non-membership.
Lately I've been wondering if perhaps the mediation of Christianity itself detracts from the universal nature claimed by Christian narrative and theology, that our attempts to define and distinguish orthodoxy is, in fact, limiting the scope and effectiveness of God's work in the world.
Ultimately, the earliest Christian creed was, "Jesus Christ is Lord," everything else is simply interpretation. From that point, we've splintered and broken off into our own little groups based on how we define what that means, largely in the context of right and wrong. What's resulted is essentially an extra layer of mediation - we have a group, theology, denomination, etc through which we view and participate in Christianity (or, more broadly, interact with God).
Perhaps the next phase of religious development is the removal or rejection of those mediating lenses?
This is not a new concept, to be sure. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about "religionless Christianity," although he was martyred before he could really flesh out his idea in practice. I've seen other thinkers in recent years (most notably, to my perspective, Peter Rollins) who have attempted to continue exploring Bonhoeffer's vision.
The ultimate question each person asks is "how do I live rightly in the world?" Our answers come from all over the place, with varying degrees of respectability. For Christians, the answers to this question come filtered through not only a specific narrative, but a specific interpretation of that narrative. It's very easy to be bound by the narrative or the interpretation and miss the question entirely. It's also easy to defend the narrative rather than address the question.
More specifically: I am part of the Church of the Nazarene, which has a very specific set of standards and practices in an attempt to unify those everywhere who call themselves Nazarene. I, however, and I suspect, most Nazarenes, have unique perspectives on even the interpretations of our interpretations of what it means to have Jesus Christ as Lord. In other words, we don't all agree on the things upon which we claim to agree. It devolves into semantic games pretty quickly.
The typical response - and certainly the modern response - is to double down on debate. We fight over what is really right and true and enforce that orthodoxy on all who carry the name.
That sort of thing, though, just doesn't fly so well in the emerging post-modern context. People are leery of calling anything true or right or wrong, because we understand the bias of perspective. Instead of debate, which implies a winner and a loser, we must have discussion - which implies the freedom of each party to learn, grow, change, or not, based on information and ideas presented.
This can sound an awful lot like relativism - we can't know anything for sure, therefore anything goes; I'm ok and you're ok - and it can certainly become that (although, I think the I'm ok, you're ok message was pretty similar to what Jesus told sinners, but that is a discussion for another day). What I am hoping to arrive at is the importance of relationship to this process.
When we cannot be sure of the principles or ideas, the articles of faith or the systems of belief, we can rely only on the relationship we have with people. I can only trust you because I trust you. We can't have real agreement or cooperation with people we don't know. You simply have to have some overarching authority for that to occur.
This is why I wonder about the mediation by religion. Organized religion is really an attempt at power - bringing enough people to one position by which to exert influence on others and thus gain more power. This was the sort of religious competition inherent in 1st century Palestine that Jesus spoke so vociferously against.
I've long believed that Jesus didn't come to found a religion, but to free people from religion (after all, that is what Paul is talking about in the war between law and grace, isn't it?). I'm not sure what that means going forward or how exactly faithful Christian life will adapt and evolve, but I certainly see it moving along these lines.
That doesn't mean we won't have denominations and movements and large groups of people loosely affiliated together, but it does means those affinity groups (for lack of a better term) will not be part of the mediation process, but likely ancillary elements to foster local relationship and life together.
Just something to be thinking about, I guess, as we ponder the future.
*It's a sad statement on the Church when "young leaders" applies to people who are 49, let alone 33 - I have peers who serve as General Managers of professional sports teams and CEOs of major companies, for crying out loud!
Also, a heart congratulations to anyone who made it through the whole post. This has got to be one of the most dense and confusing things I've ever written; even I don't know if it really makes any sense. I do believe it, though, and I'll continue to process it further (and hopefully with more clarity) in the future. Cheerio, and good day!
